Strange & Charmed

5 Things I ♥ about the Filofax Community

If you have been reading my blog for a while, as in before March, you have probably been wondering what the heck is up with me and being obsessed with Filofax planners and stationery! Seriously guys, I am feeling you if you have been a little confused about this whole new world I have decided to incorporate into my life and into the blog. I know it’s hard to explain personal obsessions to those looking in from the outside, but being organized is sort of my thing, or at least it used to be my thing back in college, high school, middle school and beyond! Life after college changed the way I organized myself. I stopped being hyper organized and became more strategically organized, spending time on the things that mattered and not everything as a whole. But as life progresses, I find that more and more things become important enough to need a specific place in my life and I need to keep track of it! So, enter Filofaxes, Kikki K planners, washi tape, etc. Once I started researching planners, I uncovered the whole online Filofax and planner community that is down right amazing! I even started using Facebook again just to be part of the groups (and that’s saying a lot because I have not used Facebook for like two years!) I know its not for everyone, but I like the sense of community and sharing of ideas because all that jazz really makes me feel supported and helpful, so I gave some serious thought to why I love the Filofax community so much as a way to give you all an understanding of my obsession. This is what I came up with!

1. RAKs: I know some people may see me use this term on my blog or on twitter/instagram, but RAK stands for Random Acts of Kindness. Within the Filo community, this term refers to people send others a small letter or package with positive words of encouragement or gifts of stationery supplies. It is also known as Happy Mail and it can be anonymous or not. There are a few groups on Facebook dedicated to this precious act of giving and it is definitely one of the big reasons I like to participate in the groups. It’s not that I am looking to receive things from others, but I am obsessed with sending out RAKs and sharing with people I have never met. I honestly think it’s a beautiful example of the human spirit and an example that the internet can really help to bring people together from all over the world.

2. Pen Pals: Another popular activity within the Filofax community is pen paling. Now, I do not have a letter writing pen pal (although I have more than a few people I message and email with) but many people in the stationery groups are involved with it and I think its amazing! The act of letter writing is such an ancient and lovely practice that I am glad to see its resurgence in these communities. You know how I feel about hand written thank you notes, and in so many ways this is again an amazing way that the internet is bringing people together.

3. Positivity: I cannot get enough of the Filofax groups, pictures and posts because they are bursting with positivity. This community is one of those few places online where I truly feel safe and protected from the dredge of the internet. That’s not to say that everyone is always happy and upbeat, but the general culture is one of inclusion, support and self-betterment. The community members are always promoting each other, sharing ideas and always have kind words to share. It has such a positive vibe!

4. No lack of content: From the multiple Facebook groups to the Instagram hasthtags to the endless blogs and websites to the YouTube videos and the Pinterest boards, there is such a wealth of content within the Filofax community that you can immerse yourself in it and always find something new. This is probably why I am so obsessed, because the more you dig the more you find and uncover and suddenly hours have passed and you walk away feeling like you have learned so much and felt all the positive energy!

5. New Friends: Out of everything I have dabbled with online, nothing has yielded so many personal connections as this community. I have made a bunch of new online friends, some bloggers, some just enthusiasts, but all of them wonderful. It really is amazing how a subject like a planner would draw people together in such a profound way, but it has and I am so glad that I discovered this little pocket of the internet where I truly feel at home!

Blogging tech

Using Analytics on your Blog

As you may know, yesterday was my final installment of the Blogging 101 series and I covered the topic of monetizing your blog in a variety of ways. So, today I thought I should spend some time talking about the importance of tracking your analytics to help you understand your blog’s audience and reach! There are two points that I would like to make on the subject, the first is that you should be tracking analytics on your site, and the second is that the tracking system you should be using is Google Analytics!

To the first point, if you have a blog, you should be using analytics tracking. These systems are incredibly helpful and can give you a variety of information about your audience, their behavior on your website and which posts are driving views and which posts are duds. If your blog is small, you may not think analytics are important to focus on while you are growing your blog, but you would be surprised by the insights you can get in your analytic reports. Let’s be honest, when we publish posts, we really have no clue how the post is going to fare. I often write this long elaborate posts that I am sure will be popular and then when I check my analytics I find that it wasn’t attracting as many eyes as I would have hoped. Sometimes as content creators, we don’t know what will be popular unless you have been blogging and writing for a decent amount of time, but heck, I have been at this for years and I still have figured out the magic formula! So, it’s important for me to check my analytics, see what is doing well and what is not so I can spend more time creating content that my readers want and not waste my time on a piece that I may find interesting, but perhaps my audience does not. That’s not to say that I think we as bloggers need to ignore what we like to write about, but when you are serious about growing your blog and your audience, you have to focus on what works and finding unique and creative ways to package your content in ways that continue to surprise and delight your readers! Analytics can tell you so much about your audience as well, not just what posts are popular. You can find out where the majority of your audience lives (this is super helpful for figuring out times when you publish your posts), you can find out their age and gender (which is sometimes a very interesting thing to know if you are attracting more male or female readers than you expected based on your content so that you can either create more for those audience members or perhaps refocus your content to attract the reader you have in mind) and of course analytics helps you track how long people spend on your site and your page views (which is a necessary piece of information if you are looking to monetize your blog).

So, now that you know why analytics are important, lets talk about which analytics service you should be using. I’ll be honest, the reason I am writing this post is because I recently needed to switch over to Google Analytics and I wanted to make sure that others were using it because it is the industry standard when it comes to analytics. For years I have been using a different site to track my analytics, but now that my blog is growing and I am thinking seriously about monetization, I am finding that sponsors, marketers and affiliate networks want to see Google Analytics information specifically. Google Analytics is free, so thats a bonus, and it does give you an array of options that didn’t exist with my previous analytics system. I really wish I had jumped on the Google Analytics bandwagon earlier and because of my situation, I wanted to let you all know that you should seriously consider using it as well if you have no current analytics tracking or if you are using a different site. Analytics are one of those things that if you pay attention to, they can help you learn and grow your site, but if you don’t pay attention to them, its still good to have a system in place in case the day ever comes when you need the information.

Blogging Career

Blogging 101: How to Monetize your Blog

Blogging 101 is a 10 part series where I share my tips and tricks for creating and growing a blog from scratch. This is the tenth installment in the series, and you can find more information on the topics of this series here.

Wow! I cannot believe this is the final installment of my Blogging 101 series. It’s been over two months since I posted my first piece and I know I have picked up a few new followers along the way specifically because of this series! I sincerely hope this series has helped you think about starting a blog or has given you new ideas or information to help make your blog the best it can be! When I started this series, I truly wanted to demystify blogging for those who may have been interested in the subject but thought the task too big or too complicated to pursue. I am by no means a professional on the subject, but I often think there is too much secrecy among bloggers about what they do, what works and what doesn’t, and I really wanted to give some real practical advice on the subject. So, thanks for reading and letting me impart my knowledge to all of you!

I have chosen the subject of monetization as the final installment of my series for a very specific purpose. First of all, I believe that blogging as we know it today was rooted in a true passion for writing and sharing as a means of creative outlet and that the monetization of blogs was something that came after. Because of this, I believe that you should first and foremost wish to run a blog for the love of it! If you don’t love what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it, and people will be able to tell if your heart isn’t in it. That leads me to my second reason for publishing this topic last, because it is hard work to make money from blogging and if your heart isn’t in it, you won’t ever make it long enough to earn a decent income. So, start your blog for you, as a hobby and/or creative outlet. Put your heart into your content and feel a true passion for what you post, and then monetize strategically!

It may surprise you to hear that there are many ways for you to monetize your blog. When you think about it, however, it makes a lot of sense that there would be more than one way to earn an income from blogging, because the business of blogging is all about entrepreneurship, and any good entrepreneur will tell you that if you want to make money from a business venture, you need to diversify your income streams! I am going to break down those possible income streams into categories. Those categories are affiliate networks, sponsorships, advertising, and direct sales.

Affiliate networks are merchant revenue sharing programs where bloggers can sign up to promote products through their blogs and earn a percentage of any sales that result from their direct links. There are many different affiliate networks out there, some that promote a wide variety of products (Amazon) and some that represent merchants from specific fields like fashion (Reward Style). These networks also vary in the selectivity of their membership. Some programs are pretty lax in the requirements of their members, and some are highly selective. Since there are such a wide variety of networks, with so many different options, I highly suggest that you do some research on your own for which networks you may want to target. One of the best things about affiliate networks is that you can be a member of multiple networks in most cases and promote multiple different products within your blog if you so choose.

Sponsorships are a more targeted and labor intensive form of monetization in which bloggers work directly with companies or marketers to create content centered around specific products. I say that these opportunities are more labor intensive because usually a blogger would need to do a good amount of work in order to secure a sponsorship. This may mean the blogger would have to research companies, find contacts and then pitch a blog post idea to the company, making the case for how the sponsorship would benefit the company, its products and negotiate an appropriate amount of payment. If you have ever seen a sponsored post in a blog, you may have wondered how the blogger came to that opportunity. More prominent bloggers are often directly approached by companies to promote their products, others use agents or are members of marketing related networks where companies can pick bloggers from a pool of possible candidates to promote products, but often, bloggers need to directly contact companies or their marketing firms in order to start on the road to sponsored posts. As you may be thinking, this process can be an uphill battle, but normally once a blogger has established a reputation for working well with companies, the process can become easier as you add companies to your sponsorship resume.

The next form of monetization is selling advertising space on your blog. This one is pretty straight forward, but for some, the idea of selling ad space can be a daunting task, which is why there are platforms out there like Passionfruit Ads* that will help make the process easier. Sites like Passionfruit help bloggers manage advertisements by placing ad images, tracking and rotating ads, and automating payments. Of course, sites like these take a portion of your ad revenue for the service they provide, but if you want to leave your ad management up to a more precise platform, this could be an easy way for you to sell ad space without spending your own precious time.

The final form of monetization I am going to cover is direct sales, and by this, I mean by using your blog to promote and sell your goods and/or services. It is very common to find blogs that support a business, either a real brick and mortar company or an e-business. You can sell anything from digital products (ebooks, podcasts, learning series tutorials etc) to physical goods (products you create yourself or resell) to services (event planning, consulting, photography etc). Even if you don’t run a business, you can still find ways to use direct sales on your blog. Perhaps you write about recipes on your blog, you could put together a digital ebook and sell it through your site. Maybe you love photography and take beautiful images, you could sell digital copies of your photo’s. The possibilities are truly endless when it comes to directly selling to your blog readers and if you are truly serious about monetizing your blog, I think this is something that everyone should be thinking seriously about.

So, that’s it! Those are the four major categories of blog monetization. They are probably not the only ways you can make money through your blog, but I think they are the most common and tried and true approaches. The best part is, you can employ one or more of these methods on your own blog right now and with some ground work and planning, there is no reason why you couldn’t take advantage of all the methods I suggested. Like I said earlier, diversifying your income streams is important if you are trying to make money as an internet entrepreneur, so give each method some thought, figure out how you could apply each to your own blog and get to making some money! I am by no means an expert on this subject, so if you have any questions, which I am sure you have many if you are serious about this enterprise, I have some suggested reading for you!

Must-Read Business Books for anyone looking to monetize their blog in a smart and strategic way!

And yes! Those are affiliate links to Amazon where you can purchase the books! If my advice has been helpful and you would like to thank me for it, using my affiliate links to purchase products I recommend is an easy way to support me and my blog and it doesn’t cost you anything extra. I don’t always use affiliate links and I don’t always make product recommendations, but when I do, you can be sure that it’s for products I do recommend and honestly believe in. That’s my commitment to you as my reader and it is one I hope you bring to your own blogs with a true sense of responsibility to your readers as your pursue the path of monetization!

*This site was recommended to me by my blogging buddy Kristin from My Life as a Teacup!

books lifestyle

Oyster: The Dawn of Enlightenment 2.0?

I have been following the progression of the internet’s soon to be newest obsession, OysterBooks.com, for quite some time now. In the vein of Netflix, Spotify and Audible, Oyster is a site/app that allows users to access thousands of ebooks through a monthly subscription based service that right now costs only $9.95. Not bad, right? For the cost of about one ebook, you can access a nearly unlimited supply of reading material that the site boasts includes over 200,000 titles and growing. To be quite honest, I have been wondering how a site like Oyster would fare in our modern digital age. How would a subscription service for full length written works manage in an internet age culture where we communicate through pictures and video, skim news headlines and have a collective attention span of five seconds? We’ve replaced solid magazine articles with short blog posts, and instruction manuals with a Pinterest board. I definitely knew Oyster was something that would come around eventually, we have subscription services for everything from games to movies to TV shows to music, not to mention the hundreds of subscription boxes for toys, clothing, food and grooming supplies, so why not books? But how many of us actually read books anymore, or at least enough to make a subscription worth the money? Initially, I think many people are going to think like I did that paying the price of a book per month is a little silly when we have library’s where you can borrow all these books and more for free, and that’s essentially what you are doing with the app, renting books. Of course, these are ebooks so its much more convenient for you to download a new book than to drive to the library to pick one up physically, and even libraries with ebook selections available online still have a significant barrier to entry and in most library systems only have a few “copies” of ebooks available for lending. This does not seem to be the case with Oyster. All you need is a credit card and an iOS device which gives Oyster a reasonably low barrier to entry. I get it, not everyone has an Apple product, but think about the number of iPods, iPhones and iPads out there in the world. That’s a potentially huge market to sample from, and if anyone were going to pay $10 a month for a book, it would be an iOS user who has been conditioned over the last 7+ years to pay for their content.

So, will Oyster do for books what Netflix did for movies and TV? Will Oyster bring the good news of the written word to our attention deficit population? I think the two platforms are actually incredibly similar when you think about where Netflix was 5 years ago in comparison to where Oyster is right now. Both were flying under the radar, both had a good selection of content although void of new releases or epic blockbusters and both had a reasonable price point. Of course, we all know what happened to Netflix, even I wrote about it, but in the end Netflix made it out of all their troubles and still dominates the at home streaming market, albeit with significantly more competition. I think we could see a pretty similar situation for Oyster in the next few months and early years until the brand Oyster becomes more of a household name.

So the big question is, will you be signing up for Oyster? To help answer this question I have created something of a litmus test to decide if an Oyster subscription would work for you.

1. Do you read or begin to read at least one book a month at your leisure?

This is important because if you are not currently a reader, signing up for a subscription service for ebooks certainly isn’t going to turn you into one.

2. Browsing the main pages of the Oyster site, can you find 3 books you would be interested in reading?

Although Oyster boasts 200,000 books and counting, they promote their most popular works on their main pages. If you don’t see things you want to read while skimming their site, you probably won’t find much else better once you have full access to their collection.

3. Are you the type of person who would cancel your subscription if you were not getting use out of it?

Oyster, like Netflix and other subscription services offers a one month free trial, but you still need to sign up with a credit card, which means if you are not pleased you need to cancel before your card is charged.

If you said NO to any of those three questions above, this subscription is probably not for you, unless you also said YES to question three. I’m all for giving things a try and taking a look around, especially when their is a free trial associated with it, so if you know you will stay on top of your trial and cancel before you begin getting charged, by all means, give the app a whirl if you’re curious! If you happen to be an avid reader, or at least someone who likes to pick up a new title or two every month, perhaps Oyster would be a good way for you to save some money and get a variety of leisure time reading material, so long as you are not addicted to new releases.

Okay, moment of truth, will you be signing up for Oyster? If you have already joined, let us know what you think about the service in the comments below. I would love to hear more from those who have joined and understand more of that experience!

Blogging Career tech

10 Ways to use Video on Your Blog

Let me tell you a little story to kick off this post! Back in early 2009, I had just started a new blog with a tech focus that some of you may remember if you have been following me for a while. It was called “The Pink Mac” and it was all about my love for technology and Apple products; a total fan girl homage to my computer! One day, I was contacted by a company to review some of their gadget cases and I accepted. At that time, I had only been a traditional blogger, and didn’t even have a YouTube channel, but I loved watching tech reviews and unboxings so much that I decided that I would make the unboxing and review of these cases into a video. I’ll be honest, when I filmed that first video on the kitchen table at my dad’s house, I wasn’t even sure if I would post it. I remember feeling like a total weirdo for talking to myself about some iPod cases while my dad and step mom were watching TV on mute in the room next to me until I finished. Once I got home and reviewed the footage, I decided that although it wasn’t the best tech video, it certainly wasn’t the worst (although if you go back now and watch it, it was such poor quality, but for the time that was the norm). So, I bit the bullet, signed up for a YouTube channel and uploaded the video! Although I wasn’t as serious about my YouTube channel in those early days, it’s one of those, if I had known then what I know now, who knows how different things could have been for me, my brand and my blog! So, hopefully you learn a thing or two about video in this post and avoid my mistake!

Video has been a major trend among websites for years now, but with the major rise of YouTube, even famous video bloggers have started integrating their content to personal blogs and websites, and major bloggers have been taking a cue from the YouTube generation and adding video content to their sites as well. Video, whether you like it or not, is the future of blogging. As a blogger today, you need to treat your blog like your own little media empire. Think Martha Stewart, Oprah, Rachel Ray, and the like. Each of these women have an empire around their brand which includes written work via magazine’s and blogs, and video work via television and YouTube channels. Now, I get it, you may not want to be the next Martha Stewart, but in order to have a successful slice of the internet, we should be looking at brands like these and producing as much as we can like them. Why? Because they have whole teams dedicated to their media, studying the market trends and telling the brand where it needs to be. If you are like me, you can’t afford such a team, so the best you and I can do is just follow their lead!

For the uninitiated, video can seem like a whole new world of content, and it really is, but the good thing is, you can start slow and work your way into using it more and more as time progresses and you get used to the medium. The important thing to remember is that, in today’s world, you need to put out a pretty decent quality video to be taken seriously, which means HD video and good lighting, but I already talked about how that doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Most decent point and shoot cameras nowadays take HD video as well. I happen to use this video camera which is reasonably priced and this studio lighting kit which is pretty affordable! So, what are some ways that you can start using video on your blog right now? I have compiled a list of 10 videos that nearly any blogger can film no matter what you blog about!

An introduction to your blog
An “About Me” video that you can leave in your bio page
Your favorite things
20 random facts about you
A desk tour (aka a tour of your workspace, the place where you sit and blog, etc)
A video show and tell to accompany a written product review
What’s in your bag video (this is super popular!)
An outfit of the day video (you don’t need to be a fashion blogger to do this!)
A “Get Ready with Me” video (aka morning routine; people also love these)
A “How To “ video related to the content of your blog (these can be super useful!)

Okay, so now you have some ideas for video content brewing in your mind! You don’t have to do all of these videos at one time, like I said, start with one and then gradually work into the others. Take your time and produce the best video you can. That’s more important than rushing to make a ton of mediocre videos! Good luck!!

Blogging Career

Blogging 101: Networking!

Blogging 101 is a 10 part series where I share my tips and tricks for creating and growing a blog from scratch. This is the ninth installment in the series, and you can find more information on the topics of this series here.

If you have been following this series since the beginning, you now know how to start a blog, how to create great content and how to use social media to get your message out to your audience! Now, its time to discuss networking! Networking with your peers as well as networking with possible sponsors, customers or clients. You may have started a blog as a means to promote a business, or just to express yourself and have fun. You may have some specific financial goals you are looking to hit or perhaps just want the validation of knowing your content is reaching a certain of number of people. The best tool you have to make these things happen, is networking!

When it comes to networking with your peers (perhaps other bloggers or business owners) the sky is the limit to the amount of networking you can do. It never hurts to have friends within your field and you can’t have too many. However, when networking with your peers, I think it’s also important to have a general idea or plan for what you would like to get out of specific relationships. Let’s say you know you want to grow your audience and you think Blogger X may have a similar audience to yours and you want to do a linkup or a guest post involving that blogger and their site. You may be able to simply send them an email or engage them on social media and see if they would be interested, or if they aren’t quite as receptive as you would hope, you may need to network your way into their sphere. Now, this sort of thing is a challenge for me, as it may be for you, but we all know or have heard about people who start from the ground up and eventually work their way into the circles of those they admire or would like to work with. I know for women, this can be a difficult skill to develop because we tend to question ourselves too much, but just use that image in your mind of that person you who or storied you have heard about others and start making connections with people one at a time. Maybe you need to make a list, like a 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon style chart of who you are trying to reach and different people you may be able to talk to that could introduce you to another person or put in a good word until one day you are in direct contact with Blogger X. Remember, networking isn’t about making friends (although you certainly can along the way) it’s about making contacts and connections with people who can help you get to where you want to go.

Now, on the alternate of this, when it comes to networking with potential sponsors or clients, you may want to tread a little lighter. In this situation, you need to know who you want to work with and why. Why, not only for yourself, but why would you working with Brand X or Company X would be beneficial to them just as much as it would you. I suggest making a list and really refining down to the companies you want to work with so that when you are networking you are building a direct bridge to the brand or company you would like to make contact with. Again, some companies may be more receptive and open to such interactions, and sometimes you need to dig to find out who can help you get in front of (or get an email to) the right person to make a connection and relationship with that company or brand. Another reason you don’t want to be networking all over the place when it comes to potential clients or sponsors, is because people within industries talk, and you don’t want to be seen as the blogger or business owner who will approach anyone with an idea. When you approach brands or companies with opportunities to create relationships, they want to feel like they are the only one or at least one of the select few you want to work with because what you have to offer is perfect for them alone, not 100 other companies.

As much as possible, no matter if you are looking for connections with peers or potential sponsors, give yourself real concrete expectations that you can execute against. Be as deliberate as possible with your choices, which means you need to put a lot of thought behind even the smallest actions. And above all, never stop networking! You never know the opportunities you may find through networking, so don’t stop just because you hit a goal, always have another goal in mind!

lifestyle Solutions

5 Unique Bridal Shower Gift Ideas

Spring inevitably means one thing, wedding season is here! I’m sure I am not the only one with some wedding related events on the calendar for the next few months, and with the fun of wedding celebrations also comes the stress of having to pick out gifts. Although a traditional couple will usually provide a gift registry, not all of us are the buy off the registry types. Whether it’s because the bride or groom is a significant person in your life or perhaps you would prefer the surprise of picking out an item yourself, I have assembled a few gift ideas that you may not find on your average registry!

1. Kate Spade “MRS” Necklace ($75): This lovely piece is dainty and timeless and will surely win over the heart of the bride!

2. Paper Source Custom Stamp Gift Set ($39.95): Once the bride and groom get back from the honeymoon they are going to have a lot of thank you’s to send out. Make the process a little easier and much more personalized by giving them a custom stamp gift set that they can have made with their address and name to reflect their new life and home together.

3. Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child ($22): Whether or not the bride and groom are already knowledgable cooks, this timeless guide to cooking is like a cooking school in paper form. Let them learn the basics or unleash their inner chef with this cookbook staple!

4. Glitzy Glam Initial Wine Glasses ($15 each): Although the happy couple may be registered for some fine china wine glasses, this unique and personalize gift will be a welcome treat, and well, you can never have enough wine glasses! Am I right?

5. Jonathan Adler All Occasion Note Card Set ($15): Beautiful stationery is one of those things most people don’t register for, but it makes a classic and very affordable gift. This set is a great staple to have around in case a last-minute note is needed or someone forgets to pickup a birthday card!

Blogging Solutions tech

Editing Photos on your iPhone

Since I just posted my best tips for taking awesome photos as part of my Blogging 101 series, I decided to also give you guys a tutorial of sorts on how I edit my iPhone photos for the web! I do frequently use my iPhone for photos I post to my blog because my iPhone takes great pics and I have an array of apps that help me achieve multiple different effects from my phone.

The apps I use in this video are AfterLight, BigLens and Rhonna Designs! Please make sure to click through the video player to Youtube and give me a Like and Subscribe to my channel if you aren’t already! Thanks so much and I hope you enjoy the video!

What other iOS or Android Apps do you use to edit photos from your phone? Let us know in the comments below!

Blogging Solutions

Blogging 101: Photography Basics

Blogging 101 is a 10 part series where I share my tips and tricks for creating and growing a blog from scratch. This is the eighth installment in the series, and you can find more information on the topics of this series here.

If you are thinking that blogging has more to do with writing than pictures, you are dead wrong. There was a reason I listed a camera as a piece of necessary hardware in my basics guide, and that’s because pictures are a major component of blogs and blog posts in 2014! Think about it, do you read any amazing blogs that use images in their posts? Are those images relevant and interesting aids to the content itself? I’m pretty sure that would be a yes and a yes! Why is that? Because people love pictures. Images tell stories just as much as your blog posts do, and in this era of the 5 second attention span (thanks Twitter & Instagram) leading with a great image is the best way to capture someones attention so that they want to stick around to read your posts. Now, if you haven’t been very interested in photography before and are totally worried now that you don’t have the right equipment or skills to add great photos to your blog, worry not! With a few simple tips, I am going to instruct you on how to take great photos for your blog no matter what your current skill level with a camera!

First and foremost, lets discuss the camera itself. Like I mentioned in a previous installment, any camera that can take decent shots will do to start you off on the road to taking supporting blog images. I myself use an old Canon point and shoot, which surprises some people who think I must be using a higher end camera. Nope, I just use a few solid photography techniques that I am going to share with you today. You can even use a smartphone camera, again, only if it shoots decent photos, meaning you can get a good focus on your subjects and the photo comes out clear and without any pixellated distortion. I use my iPhone 5’s camera more often than you may realize, again, because I use specific techniques that help me take better photos!

Okay, so you have a pretty decent camera in your hands and you’re ready to take some photos, what are these important techniques I keep talking about? Well, the first one is to shoot in plenty of light! Most of the photos I take are shot in my living room because I have a big window that lets in beautify natural light. Natural light is your friend, so use it! If you are like me and take/need mostly still life sorts of shots, make yourself a set up by a window that gets lots of light pouring in and take your photos in the afternoon when the sun is at its highest and brightest in the sky. The more light you get in your shots, the clearer your photos will be and using natural light means the objects in your shots will be true to color more often than not!

Another technique I use that relates to lighting is that I like to shoot my pictures on a light reflecting surface. Ever notice that most of my images have a white background or that my objects are sitting on a white surface? That’s because I am trying to maximize light and light bounces off white surfaces really well! If you don’t have a white surface in your home near a window, go out and pick up a few white foam core boards from your local dollar store or craft store. You can use the boards as your surface and even set up other boards around your photo set up to reflect even more light! One great tip I have for shooting in natural light is to keep your objects facing the direct source of your light (facing the window if that’s your light source). This means that shadows will be behind your objects so that they don’t interfere with or darken the image.

If shadows are too heavy in your images, like I said above, use a piece of white foam core board and set that up facing the shadow so that light bounces off your board and towards the shadow you want to dissolve. Hand mirrors are also great for dissolving dark shadows or even for highlighting objects in a spot light type way. Just point your hand mirror towards your object, making sure it’s also picking up light from your source and you will see that the mirror focuses light wherever you point it. Experiment with moving the mirror closer to and further away from your objects to see how it affects the lighting in the scene.

Okay, so I have explained how to work with natural lighting, but what happens if its dark outside or if it’s night-time and you want to take a picture? Now, this gets a little tricky because the answer is not to just turn on your household overhead lighting and shoot with that because the quality of most people’s home lighting isn’t photo quality! You could buy a photo lighting kit, I use this one from Amazon which is very inexpensive, but I still think that natural lighting is the best light to shoot in! One tip I have already mentioned in an earlier installment is to schedule yourself a date and time to shoot a bulk amount of photos so that you are not taking your photos piece meal, some one day, some another day, and on and on. One of the benefits to doing this photo shoot style session is that you can choose a time of day when the lighting is great and plan out all the shots you need for upcoming blog posts and just go to town taking all the pictures you need and it avoids the situation of having to take a last-minute picture in undesirable light.

Now that we have discussed lighting, I would like to discuss another major point of photography which is composition. The way you compose your images is very important because you want your photos to be interesting and visibly legible. The default technique that I think anyone with photography knowledge would suggest is the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is a principle in photography that helps to create balanced composition through the use of a visual guide. Imagine when you are taking a photo that there is a tic-tac-to board drawn on your image, breaking your image into three sections horizontally and three sections vertically. The idea is that you want to place your point of focus on a point on this grid where two lines intersect and if you have more than one important object in your frame, you want to position those all at places in the grid where lines intersect. It’s a pretty simple concept and its so popular in fact that many cameras including smartphone cameras have a mode that is already built-in to the software of the device that will go ahead and add the grid marks for you in case you’re not so good with imagining them in your head.

Of course, the rule of thirds isn’t the be all and end all of good composition. I always like to mix it up and try new angles to shoot my photos from and give unexpected views. Once you have good lighting in place you can try multiple different compositions for shots and all different angles and close-ups you can imagine! This leads me to the final technique I rely on to take great photos. Practice! Practice, practice, practice! Photography isn’t a skill you learn overnight, although I do believe some people have a natural knack for composition while others have to work on it, but the only way you will get great photos is to practice and experiment as often as you can! You never know what you’re going to get and you may play around with some different compositions and find that you create a few interesting ones that may not fit with a specific blog post you have in mind right now, but heck, save that cool shot for a rainy day or post it to Instagram to drive more attention to your blog! You should always be building up on the stock of photos you have available to you so get your camera and start shooting!

Blogging Solutions

How to Grow your Blog

One of the most frequent questions I get from readers looking for advice on their own blogs has something to do with growing their blog. Whether you’re looking for more comments, more page views, or more subscribers, you are looking to draw more attention to your blog by engaging your current audience and expanding your audience. Now, let me be completely honest with you and say that this is a process that does not happen overnight. It normally takes a long time to do this and in my personal experience, you as the blog author need to be very hands on in this process or it will take even more time. I believe the consensus is from the blogging community and professionals that it should take you a year of solid attention to grow your blog to a decent following if you do a few key things regularly. So, I am going to give you some tips of some things you need to do in order to grow your blog, some you may do, some you may not do, but all of them are very important and require your sincere attention in order to work.

1. Post regularly: I am not sure where I heard this, but I was told that in order for Google to consider your blog an active, regular site that it will include regularly in search results, you need to post three times a week. This is why I upped my posting schedule from two times a week to three in the last year. Not only is regular posting good for your blog’s SEO {search engine optimization, which I will not be discussing in this series, but you can definitely research the subject online for more info} but it is also a very important part of developing a regular schedule to draw in viewers. You may get people coming to your site, but unless they see that you are posting regularly with interesting content, they won’t feel the need to return. Consistency is something I talk about a lot in blogging and it’s so important that you are consistently posting content for your readers!

2. Engage your readers: Like I mentioned earlier in this post, I am asked a lot about getting more comments. I know for some bloggers just starting out, the idea of getting lots of comments is a sign that your blog is doing well or at least moving in the right direction, but the truth of the matter is that with so many forms of social media communication out there, a comment on your blog isn’t the only or even best sign, of an engaged audience. Think about it, how often do you read a blog post and leave a comment? Most likely you read way more posts than the ones you comment on, even if you did like the post. So, how do you engage your readers without using comments? Well, social media is the answer for that. Make sure you are regularly tweeting out links to your posts, liking, retweeting, favoriting and just being completely active with your viewers. If someone online says something nice or shares a post or link to your blog, make sure you say thank you! Make sure your readers know you are alive and you can see what they are doing! This will reinforce the actions they have done and they are more likely to tweet you out to their followers or post your link to their Facebook or interact with you on Instagram! Okay, but what if you do want to see more comments? Well, the easy answer for that is make sure you are writing quality posts and asking your readers for their feedback. Have you noticed that I will usually leave some questions and prompts at the end of my blog posts asking for feedback? Yea, well before I did that, my comments section was pretty much nonexistent.

3. Reach out to other bloggers: The blogging community is so large and vast that it’s virtually impossible for you not to be able to find another blogger that you can relate to. I suggest reaching out to these bloggers and forging some social media friendships with them because it’s infinitely more helpful to have a friend who knows what you’re going through. For example, my blogging BFF is Kristen from My Life as a Teacup! We met in real life, but we mostly chat via Skype or our social media feeds and even through email because we live pretty far away from each other! I suggest connecting with a few bloggers online that you can relate to and even if they don’t become a BFF, they still add to the network of people you know online and that support can be immensely helpful. Now, just a quick common sense tip that I want to throw out there with this, is that you should probably find other bloggers who are in the same boat as you, as in they are also just starting out or have a small following. Not to say you couldn’t be friends with the worlds most popular blogger, but someone who runs a large blog may not respond directly to someone who is small and just starting out. I can only imagine the number of small time bloggers that message bigger bloggers on a regular basis asking for help or advice, so just try to stick with someone in your playing field because they are way more likely to want the relationship because it will also benefit them. Now, once you have a few blogger friends in your social media feed, don’t just stop there. Continue to reach out to new bloggers and grow your friendships and support system. Just like if you were networking for your blog or profession, you need to constantly (or should I say consistently) be talking to new people in the field of blogging!

Okay folks, that’s all! Keep doing those three things and you will find yourself with a pretty engaged audience and larger following in no time! Obviously with this, the more you do, the quicker you will grow, but it’s never an overnight thing, so plan to be spending a few months to a year on this before you see major changes!

Now for the comments section on this post, I would love if I could make some matches for blogging buddies so if you would like to meet some new bloggers (online of course) and would be open to be contacted, please leave a comment below with a link to your blog and let us know some ways we can get in touch with you like Twitter or IG (don’t leave a link to your email because that’s probably not a good idea)! I know I have a bunch of new and existing bloggers reading this series so don’t be shy, say hello and make a friend!